To the uninitiated it may sound like a simple choice: accept the recommended medical treatment for a deadly cancer or face the probability that it will kill you. I faced a similar option this year when a large tumour was discovered on the left side of my brain. The neurosurgeon reviewing my scan

These are troubling times for Ehud Barak, Israel’s veteran Defence Minister. His country faces the prospect of Hezbollah militants in Lebanon gaining chemical weapons and long-range missiles from Syria at the same time as it grapples with the potential of a nuclear-armed Iran on its doorstep. And

Israel is ready to launch military action if Hezbollah militants try to move chemical weapons or long-range ballistic missiles from Syria into Lebanon, the Israeli Defence Minister said yesterday. Ehud Barak voiced concern about the fate of Syria’s stockpile of weapons once the regime of President

Fleet Street turned out in force yesterday to pay its final respects to one of the great foreign correspondents of this age. Reporters, photographers, spooks and assorted figures from the life of Marie Colvin packed into St Martin-in-the-Fields church for a final farewell to the veteran Sunday

The Iran-Iraq war may have ended 25 years ago, but for those of us who covered it, the memories remain fresh. Missiles rained down on Tehran. Iranian teenagers, often armed with a single grenade, were sent to their deaths in waves of attacks across the marshes of southern Iraq. But it is the use of

By their very nature the world’s top intelligence agencies are a law unto themselves. MI6, the CIA, the FSB and Mossad are authorised to lie, bribe, steal and bug foreign governments and organisations, all in the name of national security. In the case of the Americans, the Russians and the

British troops in Afghanistan have learnt to defend themselves against ambushes, roadside bombs and some of the toughest guerrilla fighters in the world over the past decade. But the threat posed by members of the Afghan security forces who suddenly turn their guns on their Nato allies has become

British troops in Afghanistan have learnt to defend themselves against ambushes, roadside bombs and some of the toughest guerrilla fighters in the world over the past decade. But the growing threat by members of the Afghan security forces, who suddenly turn their guns on their Nato allies, poses

We still do not know his name or what motivated the American soldier responsible for the massacre in Kandahar at the weekend. But he may yet go down in history as the man responsible not only for the deaths of 16 Afghan civilians, but for changing the course of the war. Until this weekend, the US

US forces in Afghanistan had just allowed themselves to believe that relations with their Afghan counterparts might be returning to normal when news broke of the massacre in Kandahar today. The attack by a lone American, believed to be a special forces soldier, could not have come at a worse time